NASA Open Source Software

NASA conducts research and development in software and software technology as an essential response to the needs of NASA missions. Under the NASA Software Release policy, NASA has several options for the release of NASA developed software technologies. These options now include Open Source software release. This option is under the NASA Open Source Agreement "NOSA".

The motivations for NASA to distribute software codes Open Source are:

• to increase NASA software quality via community peer review
• to accelerate software development via community contributions
• to maximize the awareness and impact of NASA research
• to increase dissemination of NASA software in support of NASA's education mission